Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American Singer-Songwriter, actress and musician. She is one of the leading artists in this generation. Swift was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. Raised in Wyomissing, she grew up in a Christmas tree farm. At the age of 14, she decided to pursue a career in Country Music. She became the youngest artist to sign up with Sony/ATV Music Publishing House. Her first ever concert was when she was 8 years old. Her first album Taylor Swift went number #5 on Billboard 200 and stayed for more weeks. Her second album Fearless, had two famous singles Love Story and You Belong With Me which made the album as the best selling album of 2009. The album also won 4 Grammys, all Swift won them in the same day. Swift released her 3rd album Speak Now on October 25, 2010. It sold 1.04 million copies in the first week. Swift's 4th album Red went Billboard #1 with first week sales of 1.21 million copies, making Swift the first woman to make two million-album openings. In 2014, Swift released her fifth album 1989 which sold 1.28 million copies in its first week. Swift became the first woman to have three albums to sell 1 million copies in its opening week, which gave Swift a Guinness World Record. In 2017, Swift released her sixth album, reputation. Its lead single Look What You Made Me Do topped US and UK charts. Swift has won numerous awards and accolades. She has won 10 Grammy Awards, 5 Guinness World Records, one Creative Arts Emmy Award, 21 Billboard Music Awards, 12 Country Music Association Awards, 8 Academy of Country Music Awards and one Brit Award. She appeared in Time's 100 most influential people in the world (2010 and 2015), Forbes' top-earning women in music (2011–2015), Forbes' 100 most powerful women (2015), and Forbes Celebrity 100 (2016). She was the youngest woman to be included in the third of these and ranked first in Celebrity100 Early life Taylor Swift was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on December 13, 1989 to Andrea Gardener (née Finlay) Swift and Scott Kingsley Swift. She spent most of her early life in her Christmas tree farm. Her father was a financial advisor and her mother was a homemaker previously mutual fund marketing executive. She has an younger brother Austin who was born on 1992. At the age of 9, Taylor became interested in musical theater and performed in four Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions. When Taylor was about 12 years old, computer repairman and local musician Ronnie Cremer taught her how to play guitar and helped with her first efforts as a songwriter, leading to her writing "Lucky You". To help his daughter (Taylor) to start a career in country music, her father transferred to the Nashville office of Merrill Lynch when she was 14, and the family moved to a lakefront house in Hendersonville, Tennessee. One of Swift's earliest musical memories is listening to her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay (née Moehlenkamp), sing at church. In her youth, Finlay was a television host in Puerto Rico, and performed in operas in Thailand and Singapore. As a very young child, Swift enjoyed Disney movie soundtracks: "My parents noticed that, once I had run out of words, I would just make up my own." Later, her parents exposed her to artists such as James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel and Def Leppard. Swift has said she owes her confidence to her mother, who helped her prepare for class presentations as a child. She also attributes her "fascination with writing and storytelling" to her mother. Swift was introduced to country music by "the great female country artists of the '90s ... Shania, Faith, the Dixie Chicks." She was drawn to both the sound and storytelling of country music. Twain, both as a songwriter and performer, was her biggest musical influence. Hill was Swift's childhood role model: "Everything she said, did, wore, I tried to copy it." Swift admired the Dixie Chicks's defiant attitude and their ability to play their own instruments. The band's "Cowboy Take Me Away" was the first song Swift learned to play on the guitar. Swift then began to explore the music of older country stars, including Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette. She believes Parton is "an amazing example to every female songwriter out there." Other mainstream country influences include Miranda Lambert, Dwight Yoakam, Strait, Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, Reba McEntire, Jackson, Martina McBride, Rimes, McGraw and Brad Paisley. Swift also admires alt-country artists such as Ryan Adams, Patty Griffin, Lori McKenna and Bon Iver. Swift has also been influenced by many artists outside the country genre. As a pre-teen, she enjoyed bubblegum pop acts including Hanson and Britney Spears; she still has "unwavering devotion" for Spears. In her high school years, Swift listened to emo bands such as Dashboard Confessional, Fall Out Boy, The All-American Rejects and Jimmy Eat World. She was also a fan of contemporary female singer-songwriters including Celine Dion, Ingrid Michaelson, Michelle Branch, Pink, Alanis Morissette, Ashlee Simpson, Kelly Clarkson, Fefe Dobson and Avril Lavigne. Swift closely followed the musical supervision on the television dramas The O.C. and Grey's Anatomy, downloading "every" song featured. She is a fan of hip hop music, stating that "Pride a lifestyle is something that both country and hip-hop share." Swift also drew inspiration from the catalogues of veteran artists. She describes Nicks as a "hero" who "has inspired me in so many ways." Petty, she has said, "is on a pedestal for me." She is "obsessed" with Sixties acts like The Shirelles, Doris Troy and The Beach Boys. Influence also came from older female pop rock singers including Pat Benatar, Melissa Etheridge, Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin and Linda Ronstadt. Swift lists Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, Kris Kristofferson and Carly Simon as her career role models: "They've taken chances, but they've also been the same artist for their entire careers." McCartney, both as a Beatle and a solo artist, makes Swift feel "as if I've been let into his heart and his mind": "Any musician could only dream of a legacy like that." She admires Springsteen because he is "so musically relevant after such a long period of time." She aspires to be like Harris as she grows older: "It's not about fame for her, it's about music." Swift says of Kristofferson: "He shines in songwriting ... He's just one of those people who has been in this business for years but you can tell it hasn't chewed him up and spat him out." She admires Simon's "songwriting and honesty": "She's known as an emotional person but a strong person." Music career Beginning and Taylor Swift (2006-2008) Swift released her own namesake debut album Taylor Swift on October 24, 2006. Swift wrote three of the album's songs alone, and co-wrote the remaining eight with writers Rose, Robert Ellis Orrall, Brian Maher, and Angelo Petraglia. Taylor Swift peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 and spent 157 weeks on the chart, marking the longest stay by any release in the 2000s. As of August 2016 the album has sold over 7.75 million copies worldwide. The album won her several accolades. She was one of the recipients of the Nashville Songwriters Association's Songwriter/Artist of the Year in 2007, becoming the youngest person to be honored with the title. She also won the Country Music Association's Horizon Award for Best New Artist, the Academy of Country Music Awards' Top New Female Vocalist, and the American Music Awards' Favorite Country Female Artist honor. She was also nominated for Best New Artist at the 2008 Grammy Awards. ''Fearless'' (2008-2010) Swift's second studio album, Fearless, was released on November 11, 2008. The lead single, "Love Story", was released in September 2008. It peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one in Australia. Four more singles were released throughout 2008 and 2009: "White Horse", "You Belong with Me", "Fifteen" and "Fearless". "You Belong with Me" was the album's highest-charting single on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number two. The album debuted at number one on Billboard 200 and was the top-selling album of 2009 in the United States. The album received promotion from Swift's first concert tour, Fearless Tour, which grossed over $63 million. Taylor Swift: Journey to Fearless, a concert film, was aired on television and later released on DVD and Blu-ray. ''Speak Now and Red (2010-2013) In August 2010, Swift released "Mine", the leadsingle from her third studio album, Speak Now. It entered the United States at number three, making Swift the second female artist in the history of the Hot 100 (after Mariah Carey) to debut multiple tracks in the top five in one year; the other was "Today Was a Fairytale" at number two. Swift wrote the album alone and co produced every track. Speak Now, released on October 25, 2010, was a commercial success, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200, and becoming the 16th album to achieve opening week sales of one million copies. It became the fastest-selling digital album by a female artist, with 278,000 downloads in a week, earning Swift an entry in the 2010 Guinness World Records. She earned another Guinness World Record entry after she became the first woman to achieve 10 track debuts on the Billboard Hot 100. Three of the album's singles, "Mine", "Back to December", and "Mean", peaked in the top ten in Canada. The Speak Now World Tour ran from February 2011 to March 2012 and grossed over $123 million. In November 2011, Swift released her first live album, Speak Now World Tour: Live. The following month, she contributed two original songs to The Hunger Games soundtrack album: "Safe & Sound", cowritten and recorded with the Civil Wars and T-Bone Burnett, and "Eyes Open". "Safe & Sound" won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.After providing vocals for B.o.B's "Both of Us" in May 2012, Swift dated political heir Conor Kennedy from July to September 2012. In August, Swift released "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", the lead single from her fourth studio album, Red. It became her first number one in the US and New Zealand, and reached the top slot on an iTunes chart 50 minutes after its release, earning the "Fastest Selling Single in Digital History" Guinness World Record. Swift released the album's second single, "Begin Again", in October. It reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100. Other singles released from the album include "I Knew You Were Trouble", "22", "Everything Has Changed", "The Last Time", and "Red". "I Knew You Were Trouble" was a major commercial success, peaking at number two in the United States. Red was released on October 22, 2012. 1989 (2014-2016) Swift started working with her fifth album before she relocated to New York City. Swift was in a deep songwriting process for six months following The Red Tour. Swift released the album's lead single Shake It Off on August 18, 2014. It was a commercial success and it earned positive opinions from critics and they praised its musical style then followed the album's second single Blank Space. Swift said that this single is about the perception of Swift's relationships by the Media. Style and Bad Blood also topped the charts. The latter won The Video Of The Year award and Best Collaboration from the VMA (MTV Video Music Awards). The album's supporting tour, which was from May 5 - December 12, 2015. 1989 sold 1.28 million copies in the US during the first week of release and debuted atop the Billboard 200 after some time of its release. From March 2015 to June 2016, Swift dated Calvin Harris. Swift co-wrote a song along with Harris called "This What You Came For" but she was credited with her pseudonymous name ''Nils Sjöberg. On December 9 2016, Swift and Zayn Malik collaborated and wrote a song called "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" of the film "Fifty Shades Darker". 1989 won three grammy awards - for Album Of The Year, Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Music Video. reputation (2017-present) On August 23 2017, Swift cleared her Social Media Accounts and posted a slithering snake video. Most of the people thought it was to be the sixth album.She announced the album would be titled "reputation" and its lead single Look What You Made Me Do was released the next day. The album sold more than 1 million copies in one week in US. Discography * Taylor Swift (2006) * Fearless (2008) * Speak Now (2010) * Red (2012) * 1989 (2014) * reputation (2017) Gallery Scott-Swift.jpg Andrea Swift.png Austin Swift.jpg Taylor Swift.jpg Taylor Swift at the Brit Awards 2015.jpg Taylor-Swift-family-pics3.jpg Taylor-Swift-family-pics4.jpg Taylor-Swift-family-pics5.jpg Taylor-Swift-family-pics6.jpg Taylor-Swift-family-pics1.jpg Taylor-Swift-family-pics2.jpg Giphy.gif Giphy (2).gif TSD.PNG Taylor-swift-feat.jpg Original.gif